Two Weeks In: War of the Spark Tech Review

It’s been half a month since War of the Spark went live on Magic Online, and we’re already seeing the myriad effects it’s having on Modern—heck, on all non-rotating formats. But of course, being Modern Nexus, we’ll focus on just the one!

While I enjoy the Friday writing slot, it occasionally has its detriments. In this case, other content creators have gotten to the Online decklists first, and mostly covered the breakout decks. They’ve understandably omitted some of the finer details, or smaller tech updates to existing strategies. We’ll cover those and a few under-the-radar brews in today’s piece.

The decks marked with an asterisk denote strategies that have not quite proven themselves yet, or aren’t so different from existing decks in Modern. I’ve still included them in the list so as not to omit anything from Yurchick’s piece.

Finally, two higher-profile strategies from War are Neoform Griselbrand and a new spin on UW Control featuring the Teferi-Knowledge Pool combo. I don’t think the former is close to as format-warping as early pundits always seem to claim when a new combo deck rolls around, and the latter seems to me like a worse version of straight UW Control, although 1-2 Pool could become a solid tech option should the deck, for some reason, decide it wants 4 Teferi, Time Raveler at some point in the future.

Ashiok, Dream Render as Multi-Purpose Role Player

I slammed the new walkers as being pulled in too many strategic directions to see much competitive play, and continue to eat my foot as case-in-point example Ashiok, Dream Render continuously pops up in blue decks. Its two abilities are apparently relevant enough in Modern that combining them makes it a potent tool for many matchups.

A repeatable Tormod’s Crypt is nothing to sneeze at against graveyard decks, and Ashiok even boasts self-mill capabilities, as the exile clause only affects opponents. But the real winner is its static ability, which affects most Modern decks by virtue of everyone utilizing searching; the decks without fetchlands tend to be digging up critical components like Urza’s Mine anyway.

Neoform, but Not for Griselbrand

While Neoform’s loudest applications thus far have been with the 7/7, the card is starting to pop up in different shells.

That mana’s a game-changer when it comes to casting multiple spells in a turn. Neoform can tribute a creature to search up a combo piece, then pilots can cast Lunge their tributed creature with the spare mana to go off early. This play is also possible with Eldritch, and even works with multiple creatures of the same mana cost in that case. But as it costs more, it’s slower to execute. In any case, the Postmortem plan becomes hyper-reliable with so many functional evolutions in the deck, so maxing out on each piece makes sense at this stage in the deckbuilding process.

From the man who brought us the Niv-Mizzet Reborndeck mentioned above comes UG Evolve, a strategy format newcomers have wanted to work for as long as I can remember. The only War creature here is Evolution Sage, which increases the counter count on controlled creatures. Evolve’s other buggers either come down cheap and grow larger as the board develops, or create large bodies to enable the evolving threats. Undying creatures work especially well for this, including honorary Undying creature Voice of Resurgence, and especially alongside Pongify to blow them up at will and net a beefy 3/3 in the process. Following Raptor with Young Wolf and hitting Wolf with Pongify, for instance, grows Raptor to 3 power for its first attack.

The new set primarily contributes to Evolve via Neoform, which unlike similar cards such as Eldritch Evolution, is cheap enough at two mana to wield aggressively. Instead of trading creatures for a 3/3, as Pongify does, Neoform chains them into in-deck creatures, giving the deck a toolbox aspect and helping it access Evolution Sage. This new piece of tech may be what the deck needed to at last become a solid Tier 3 contender in Modern.

Meta Slayers

We’re also seeing some decks that take advantage of the direction Modern’s metagame has been heading lately by employing surgical plans of attack.

Just Two Goyfs for Me, Thanks

Zoo is far from a new strategy in Modern, but it doesn’t have close to the pedigree it used to. JUANPABLOALCALDE had something to say about Zoo’s fall from grace, fleshing out a suite of Wild Nacatls with some of Modern’s most potent hosers, tension with Tarmogoyf be damned.

Two Goyfs in a Zoo deck? What cruel brew is this? Anitmeta Zoo prefers to disrupt opponents with hosers than rely extensively on the sheer bulk of Tarmogoyf. It still includes the beater in some capacity; there are few better ways to chase a deceased Wild Nacatl, after all, and Antimeta Zoo runs plenty of card types to keep the Lhurgoyf nice and large. But it’s got different priorities, its two-drop slot occupied by other beasts.

In today’s metagame, that beast is Eidolon of the Great Revel. Hosing myriad combo decks as well as the established top dog, Izzet Phoenix, Eidolon puts the hurt on anyone chaining cantrips. Grim Lavamancer is also run at 4 here, providing free wins against small creature decks. Magus of the Moon rounds out the disruptive creature suite by punishing greedy manabases and Tron. Should these creatures prove ineffective in a given matchup, they can be looted away to Smuggler’s Copter, or else used to crew the vehicle.

…And Keep Your Fetchlands, Too

As Modern’s cardpool increases, players discover new color combinations that can work. Fatal Push, for example, enabled midrange and control decks outside of red or white, the other colors housing cheap removal options. This next deck takes that principle to the extreme, making the case that blue already has all the tools it could need.

BENNYHILLZ is known as one of UW Control’s earliest proponents, and here he re-invents the wheel again with Mono-Blue Thing. His is a control deck ditching traditional sweepers for the creature that single-handedly allows Izzet Phoenix to tangle with other creature decks, and swapping out fancy manlands for a full set of Blast Zone. The above list marks BENNYHILLZ’s second published 5-0 on this list.

The biggest drawback to mono-blue has always been its lack of removal options; we’ve seen URx, URx, and UWx succeed in Modern for this reason. But between Thing in the Ice and Blast Zone, Mono-Blue Thing has plenty of ways to answer even swarms of ground units. Out of the sideboard, Vedalken Shackles becomes another reliable option to turn the creature matchup on its head and reward players for investing so thoroughly in basic Island. Before all those engines come online, Set Adrift and the decidedly unexciting Unsummon (chosen over Vapor Snag for its applications with one’s own Snapcasters) do in a pinch.

New Harvests in Modern

The format had congealed around Phoenix and Dredge before War dropped, but all that seems to be changing now. Not only have new brews and tech choices surfaced, the metagame as a whole seems to be shaking out differently. Here’s hoping it never stops surprising us!

Jordan is the copy and content editor at Modern Nexus. He has played Magic since 2003, and Modern since its inception. Jordan favors card efficiency over raw power and specializes in disruptive aggro strategies. He always brings tuned brews to events.

So I got a chance to sleeve up the U/G evolve deck with only mild changes for a local event (mainly I stretched the Mana a bit further to support winding constrictor), and I think the deck might be fairly legit. A couple games I had variants of t1 experiment one, turn 2 voice, turn 3 experiment one, Neoform voice into rallier get back voice, which leaves you with two 3/3 experiments, a voice, a 5/5 elemental, and a 4/3 rallier on turn 3. And that’s not really an insane ask/start for the deck.

This sounds par for the course when it comes to current Modern aggro decks—Hollow One, Vengevine, and Humans routinely pump out similar boards at that speed. Which is good news for the Neoform deck! It means it can hang with the big boys. We’ll see over time if it’s as consistent as the format’s other aggro strategies 🙂

Current metagame: 12/1 – 12/31

NOTE: Metagame % is calculated from the unweighted average of all MTGO leagues, paper T8s/T16s, and GP/PT/Open Day 2s in the date range. Data is tracked in the Top Decks page, which you can browse for more details.